I gave up on social media in around 2020, I think.
I deleted my Facebook account after some years of being disgruntled with the platform. People seem to think you have to have a business page up there to have some kind of web presence proper these days.
Perhaps they're right but I've never had many business leads, from Facebook, that were worth the annoyance of having to spend time there promoting myself.
Still...
I ended up having to return to market a new business in 2022 because people seem to think if it's not on Facebook, then it's not authentic or trustworthy.
If you don't see the irony in this then I don't even know what will make you smile wryly.
F*ckall had changed in the year(s) I'd been gone.
The same posts were being recycled and nobody was being themselves in any way whatsoever. Still.
Some of my connections, who'd also been fed up with the way the platform was going, had also disappeared. But, beyond that, absolutely nothing had changed. Bar some new pretty stringent bots and the random shutting down of accounts if they were provoked.
I found it only made me irritable having to deal with all of it again.
Because that is how it's been designed and what it has been designed to do. !
I began an art installation for my profile, to voice my distaste without actually saying anything because, f*ck knows, you can't share honestly on Fakebook.
But it's more than enough to express things without words, at times.
Sometimes words don't work very well anyway.
The statement was aimed at the artificiality of the experience on Facebook. And most mainstream social media, in fact. As well as Facebook's shift to "Meta", the implications of this and the intention motivating it. Of course.
Below is the transforming profile over some weeks. The goal of which was to leave the profile up on completion of the transformation, to sit idle permanently and to use the business page anonymously.
I was busy with an NFT project behind the scenes ([meta] Verse), that I'd then use the transformed profile to market...
as my new, purely digital self - Met[t]a Me...
who everybody seemed to find far cooler and far more acceptable. until I found Hive ❤️
No. I had not yet heard of Hive or seen the logo... "synchronicity"?
It was during this transformation, and slow exit, on Facebook that I discovered Hive as the Facebook profile moved towards its completion.
Done.
I can only say, when I first joined Hive, that it took over a month to decompress from mainstream social media and to start trusting that any of this was real.
That this wasn't some kind of scam, and that there wasn't some clever thing rigged behind the scenes, to f*ck me over and take as much as could be taken from me.
Maybe two months of decompression, in fact.
A few months into Hive and this happened...
@andreart99 I've been following you for some time with interest! And 
@akida I came back to complete my purchase!
Hardened Dreamer
Mother
Warrior
Determined Dancer
and Stargazer
still...
Beyond fear is freedom
And there is nothing to be afraid of.
To Life, with Love... and always for Truth!
Nicky Dee
All images created with GIMP
